The BMS circuit was tested on a breadboard by setting all of the components and subjecting the circuit to an input voltage of 5V. This simulated the standard voltage that comes out of a phone charger. The voltage that would be sent back to the battery through the battery terminals was measured to be 7.583V which is slightly higher than the nominally charged voltage of 7.4V experienced by the battery. Further implementation was tested by applying 7.4V at the battery terminals and testing to see if the BMS circuit relayed the correct charge level of the simulated battery. This test had some form of success but only 3 of the 5 charge indicator lights lit at this voltage level. The following lights would turn on when a voltage of 7.8 and 8.3 V were hit respectively.

For the MCU, powering up the component failed. Multiple parts on the motherboard began to heat at a very rapid rate. After troubleshooting the primary power components it was determined that the primary power trace had been blown causing a massive short. This short caused a current draw of nearly 3 Amps. In order to test this theory further a second motherboard was populated with all of the power components one at a time in order to test for current draw and if the trace that the team believed to be blown would could be fully determined. The second motherboard did not pull near the current through the board as the first had but a significant amount of current (512 mA) was observed when the 3.3V linear voltage regulators had been added to the second motherboard. A little more indepth research led the team to believe that that the trace between the 5V and 3.3V regulator was not of correct width for the expected current draw of the motherboard. The images below show the required trace width requirements for both the inner and outer layer traces that make up the power distribution circuits in the board. These trace widths could also be mitigated by adding more of the 5V voltage regulators allowing for less current to be drawn from a single regulator and thus lowering the required width of the traces.

The motor driver circuit was tested through the PCB as the motor drivers were only found in surface mount components making it difficult for the team to test the circuit in a breadboard environment. Once the PCB was populated with the correct components a voltage of 7.4V was applied to the power input terminals. This then turned on lights found on the motors and ensured that the encoders of every motor were powered. Since the motherboard at this point had already failed, a separate breadboard was connected to a raspberry pi in order to test encoder outputs. Proper measurement of the encoder outputs were seen by the raspberry pi and the motor drivers could be controlled through all of the ports adding to a successful implementation of the driver board circuit.